Google, the world's leading internet-search company, on Thursday reported strong third-quarter growth in sales and profits that beat Wall Street's expectations, a further sign of Google's dominance in the lucrative online advertising market. Google reported that revenues in the July-September quarter were $4.23 billion, up 57 percent from the third quarter of last year. Excluding advertising sales that Google shares with partners, the company reported revenue of $3.01 billion. Google posted profit of $1.07 billion, an increase of 46 percent from a year ago. Google's strong earnings report comes two days after top rival Yahoo also posted third-quarter results that surpassed analysts' expectations. But Google's revenue growth in the third quarter far exceeded that of Yahoo. Google finished September with market share of 57 percent, according to comScore, up from 56.5 percent in August. Yahoo's market share also grew, but by a smaller amount, from 23.3 percent in August to 23.7 percent last month. Shares of Google were flat in after-hours trading, a possible indication that Wall Street was expecting the company to report even better third-quarter results. The stock, which has surged almost 40 percent so far this year, rose about 1 percent in regular trading on the Nasdaq Thursday.
